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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26106163">Written In Decree</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jen425/pseuds/Jen425'>Jen425</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>A Hundred Heroes Welcome You Home [68]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Kamen Rider - All Media Types, Kamen Rider Zi-O, Tokusatsu</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Backstory, Gen, Pre-Canon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 06:14:50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>926</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26106163</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jen425/pseuds/Jen425</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>His earliest memory is being, most likely, around five years old and pulled out of the rubble. The year would have been 2053, and he was scared.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>A Hundred Heroes Welcome You Home [68]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1782238</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Written In Decree</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Yooooo Woz backstory here we go.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>His earliest memory is being, most likely, around five years old and pulled out of the rubble. The year would have been 2053, and he was scared. He clung to the chest of the man who found him. Looked him in the eyes.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He blinked three times and the man said “this is impossible.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He doesn’t know what happened after that. He does know he got taken to one of the shelters by whoever found him, dropped in one of the places they keep young children found alone or abandon. That even that took a long time (a month, he’ll figure out later) because a boy in the rubble could perhaps be a trap.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Some of these places are in refugee camps. Not within the safety of Oma Zi-O’s protection but not fighting his control, either. They are terrified to fight or to bow their heads, so they are, to a certain extent, left alone. But they could still, on occasion, drop batches of children near places “cared for” by Oma Zi-O and know with reasonable certainty that they would be taken in to the world he is slowly remaking to make better, to help everyone, or whatever the propaganda says, as though it wasn’t known that the same Driver Oma Zi-O had gotten his hands on in 2018 had tech seen in the mecha which had scorched Earth’s surface, a year later.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Others are resistance bases. At best, children are cared for but raised to despise Oma. At worst, they are child soldiers, trained to fight robots and perhaps somehow, one day, kill the monster who rules the world.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Woz was given to some place closer to the “at worst.” He doesn’t even know who named him, or why. He does know however, that one day it will be his job to provide care for the sick and injured whom he meets, cook or can or transport preserves of foods to those in need, help find a way to destroy Oma Zi-O, even…</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Woz is a good fighter, too. He can remember overhearing as a child that perhaps it was powers. He isn’t sure that’s all it was.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>(He isn’t exactly special. Ask him even ten years later, and he could name a hundred children just like him from lists he’d had to run through as a commander.</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>He meets them at… well, three or four years after he’s found. Perhaps it’s telling of himself that he is, from the start, not quite beholden to time.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>(Really puts it all together, huh? A good fighter at eight or nine years old. </span>
  <em>
    <span>A</span>
  </em>
  <span> fighter, at that age.)</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>This is his second time outside of the camp he’d spent the past few years in, delivering supplies to and wounded from a camp fighting off Oma Zi-O’s guards, who are trying to take over one of the less horrible areas in the Wastes.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He’s eight-ish and grew up on a mix of very real horror stories and war stories, and so when he finds out that a certain number of defectors can become Oma’s citizens, he had the bright idea to sneak in and gather information.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He’s lucky, he gets discovered by actual spies, not by the guards or by actual defectors.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Their names are Zala, Shiro, Sam, and Mai.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They’re impressed by him, though. He doesn’t quite know how, but they get “custody” of him, for however much that means.</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>They teach him various skills until lying comes as natural as truth from his lips, cyphers are second nature, and he knows ten methods of avoiding detection.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s not always that easy, of course, but he’s going with them on missions a year and a half after he joins them.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He likes them, too. He had never gotten close with any of the other children or the caretakers, but he thinks this is what most people call a family. Zala is six years older than him or so, though she has a confirmed age, and Sam is fifteen years older than her.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Mai and Shiro, though, they were children when Oma Zi-O raised the world, when it started in Japan, they were there. Mai was four, and she remembers. Shiro was one, and he doesn’t. Both grew up </span>
  <em>
    <span>as</span>
  </em>
  <span> Oma Zi-O took over the world. Mai is the most hesitant, he remembers, and at first he’s hurt until he realizes that, once upon a time, the younger fighter were teenagers. Shiro was the one with the instant affection, and Zala sees him as a younger brother, a familiar face.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She’d been twelve, when her parents died and the others took him in. She’s a master at coding and at playing innocent.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Sam is… Sam is the hardest one to be around. More often than not he’s cruel or cold, but Woz knows he cares, too. His settlement </span>
  <em>
    <span>had</span>
  </em>
  <span> been desecrated, when he was a teen.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Sam and Shiro and Mai are a trio, they met because of the end of the world and they love each other. Woz knows not many couples stay together like they do in stories from before the end of the world, but they have. It fills him with a strange sort of hope.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And thus in this metaphor he’s the younger child, a prodigy of it. He thinks he likes it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He thinks he personally cares about the fight, because he had his family to fight for.</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>He hopes he can someday find the secret to defeating Oma Zi-O alongside them.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>(But that is </span>
  <em>
    <span>not</span>
  </em>
  <span> the story which is meant to be.)</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Find me on Tumblr @flaim-ita or @dancingqueen-mai for just Toku edits</p></blockquote></div></div>
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